The historic gardens of the Mughal Empire in India and Pakistan first drew James Wescoat to the Indus Basin four decades ago. A landscape architect and professor in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in the MIT Department of Architecture, Wescoat has returned to the region many times for research that spans studies of 17th-century waterworks and 21st-century water systems, policy analyses, and multilateral water agreements.

His partners in Pakistan include the new Centre for Water Informatics and Technology (WIT) of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). “WIT has devised innovative canal management and data transmission technologies that monitor water flows precisely and in real time,” says Wescoat, who chairs the WIT Advisory Group. “WIT’s pioneering systems can revolutionize water management.”